


who overcomes by force

by septmars



Series: heaven's lieutenants [1]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 16:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/septmars/pseuds/septmars
Summary: Asriel, as a father
Relationships: Lord Asriel & Lyra Belacqua
Series: heaven's lieutenants [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1546267
Comments: 4
Kudos: 88





	who overcomes by force

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from _Paradise Lost_

THE DAILY MAIL

** ASRIEL CONVICTED! **

In a landmark decision, the Court of Appeal has rejected Lord Asriel’s appeal. Previously, the High Court freed Lord Asriel of manslaughter charges but held him liable for tort, following a suit brought by Edward Coulter’s family under the Justice for Family of Victims Act, which entitled victim’s relatives to pursue criminal charges and monetary compensation from perpetrators. Asriel killed Coulter in an unsanctioned duel, claiming that he threatened his family. The High Court, while accepting Lord Asriel’s claim of self-defence, found that he was responsible for Edward Coulter’s wrongful death and ordered him to pay £51 million to the Coulter family. The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision, citing […]

—

The bundle on the floor did not wake up even with the roar of the gyropter's blades. Asriel expected Lyra to be fussy, like all babies are (he assumed, he did not have much experience with them) but she did not cause much trouble in the short time he’s had her. The two children were fast asleep so Asriel handed the control to Thorold so he could take a look at his daughter.

Lyra. His daughter. There was no mistaking it. The resemblance between them was too strong. Marisa had no chance to convince that old coot she was his. Asriel gritted his teeth when he remembered how she abandoned her daughter—_their _daughter. He knew she was a cold, heartless woman but he did not expect her to leave her baby alone in the hands of the Magisterium. Left with those nuns, Lyra would grow up to be another cruel cog in a ruthless machine.

No. His daughter would grow up free. She would know curiosity. She would know that there’s life beyond the stuffed altars of the Magisterium. She would know how to ask questions.

She would know how to defy heaven. He would make sure of that.

Asriel felt his heart seized by an unidentifiable emotion. Parental affection, he assumed. Discomfited by this epiphany, he took back control of the gyropter. The manicured fields and majestic spires of Oxford started to appear in the horizon. They were near.

The gyropter started to descend and the children woke up. They landed safely at Radcliffe Square. He told Thorold to guard the machine and turned to the children.

“Get out and follow me. Bring the child, and bring your bloody rucksack.”

He set off as the children scrambled to follow him. As a student he had been mischievous, and thus he came to know the alleyways of Oxford as well as the back of his hand. Oxford had been more of a home to him than London had ever been.

Unlocking the gate to Jordan, he walked straight across the garden to the Master’s quarters. The old man was not known to keep an early bedtime, but even if he had gone to sleep, Asriel hoped the ruckus caused by the storm had woken him up.

They had finally arrived in front of the Master’s quarters. Asriel told the girl to hand Lyra over to him and she did so carefully. Then, Stelmaria wanted to see her, so he crouched down. Lyra was still asleep, her daemon curled in snake form on the crook of her neck. Stelmaria had called him Pantalaimon. Usually, it would be up to the mother’s daemon to name a baby’s daemon, but of course that horrible golden monkey hadn’t bothered, so it had been up to Stelmaria. Guided by the mysterious mechanism that governed all daemons, she had named him Pantalaimon, “all-compassionate.” A most unsuitable name for any companion of his child, but in her infinite wisdom, Stelmaria had chosen it anyway.

Asriel knocked loudly at the Master’s door. The boy thrusted something in Lyra’s blankets. A present, he said. It seemed the children had become attached to Lyra in a short amount of time. Asriel had planned to bring her to the north with him, but the children had given him other ideas. Scholastic sanctuary. Of course. In his rush he’d forgotten. Oxford would be safer for a baby than Svalbard by all accounts. The Magisterium would be lurking around the corner, but he would fight them all again if need be. Lyra would not fall to their hand.

The Master appeared, confused. Asriel thrusted the child to him at the first opportunity.

“_Secundum legem de refugio scholasticorum, protectionem tegimentumque huius collegii pro filia mea Lyra nominee reposco,_” Asriel said. “Look after her.”

“Scholastic sanctuary? For this child?”

“For my daughter, Lyra, as I said.”

The Master continued to protest, saying she was not a scholar. Asriel replied then he would have to make her into one. Far better for her to be a scholar than a nun, he thought. Then he left, heading back to the gyropter. For the first time since this fiasco had begun, Asriel felt the load on his heart lightened.

The Master would take care of her. In Oxford, Lyra would grow up curious and carefree, away from the Magisterium’s clutches. She was safe.

—

THE GUARDIAN

** Lord Asriel Plans Another Expedition to the North **

Lord Asriel, aristocratic scholar and explorer, is coming back to the far north, aiming to get more news and more gold. This would be his sixth expedition, and the second after the Edward Coulter tort suit. Financially and socially ruined by the lawsuit, everyone had assumed he was escaping Brytain in shame when he left for his fifth expedition to the far north. However, Lord Asriel had defied all expectation when he came back, three years later, with a founder’s deed for a coal mine in the Sutland and new insight to the cosmology of aurora borealis, as well as a rather extensive monograph about the politics of the northern kingdoms. Now, he hopes to conjure the same miracle in his sixth expedition, partly financed by […]

—

“Lyra is asking about her parents,” the Master of Jordan College said. His wrinkled hand sat clasped on top of his heavy oak table, and his brilliant eyes regard Asriel sharply from behind his glasses. For one ridiculous moment, Asriel felt like a schoolboy scolded by his harsh schoolmaster.

“Tell her the same thing we’ve always told her,” Asriel said dismissively. He was preoccupied with his upcoming expedition. He had little time to indulge a child’s whims.

“I have. But she is a curious, wilful child. She keeps asking questions that I found increasingly difficult to answer. In that regard, she is very much like you.” The Master stood up and walked towards Asriel. He touched the sleeve of his suit. “Speak to her before you leave. To her, you are her only relative. There are some questions that can only be satisfied by an answer from you.”

Asriel considered it for a moment, then nodded. He needed the Master’s support for this new expedition. If talking to Lyra would make him happy, Asriel could spare a few minutes.

“Where is she?”

“In her rooms or in the kitchen, making mischief. Ask the servants.”

Asriel found her playing with a servant child in the garden. She had grown to be quite a rambunctious child, he heard, always running around the college, playing practical jokes on the scholars and servants. He supposed he had himself to blame; he too was a right imp as a boy. At her age it was understandable. As she grew up, though, she will need to take her studies seriously. No child of his would be stupid.

“Lyra!” he called.

Lyra looked up. Her face lighted up as she saw him.

“Uncle!” she cried. She ran towards him with outstretched arms, as if to hug him. Then, remembering her manners, she stopped abruptly, dropping her hands. Lyra walked towards him slowly. “I heard you’re going to the North again.”

“Yes.” Asriel jerked his head and the servant boy scampered away. He motioned Lyra to follow him and they both walked along the garden. Jordan’s garden was kept trimmed by its army of gardeners, so there were no tall bushy hedges for an eavesdropper to hide. Besides, in this time of day, the Scholars were busy with their studies and the servants were busy attending to their needs. Nobody would be in the garden.

“What for?” Lyra asked, bouncing along the path with him.

“Oh, some assignment for the Foreign Service Office.”

Between the rose bushes, Asriel stopped, causing Lyra to nearly bump into him. He regarded her critically. She was dirty and unkempt from her playing with the servant boy, looking more like a barbarian than any civilized child. He had to remember to ask the servants to make her look more presentable. Finished with his inspection, Asriel sat down at one of the stone benches and Lyra followed suit.

She looked up at him eagerly. Her daemon had become a butterfly, fluttering around Stelmaria.

“The Master told me that you have some questions about your parents,” Asriel said.

Lyra seemed taken aback by his statement. Her eyes were downcast. “I only asked about…” she mumbled something unintelligible.

“What?” Asriel barked. “Speak up, child. I’m a busy man and I will be gone for some time. If you have any questions, you better ask it now. Letters are hard to come by in the North.”

“I only want to know about what kind of people my parents are,” Lyra said, raising her head, staring at him defiantly. “Mrs Fulsome said that my parents must be horrible people because I have no manners, always running around, and never goes to service.”

“Who is Mrs Fulsome?”

“She’s an assistant to the head cook. But all the servants are afraid of her because she wears a blue-yellow armband with bees on it.”

A blue and yellow armband with bees was a mark of the Society of St. Urban, the lay organization of the Propaganda Fide. The Propaganda Fide used to only concern themselves with missionary work in heathen countries. But the Magisterium, in their infinite quest for more power, had recently instituted the Society, ostensibly to increase the faith of the “supposedly faithful.” No wonder the servants were afraid. Mrs Fulsome was a zealous and a spy, looking for heretics and dissenters.

“You shouldn’t listen to Mrs Fulsome.”

“Because she’s a servant?”

“No,” Asriel said. “Because she’s an idiotic bigot. It’s the one thing I cannot tolerate. You can be a bigot, if you’re brilliant. You can be an idiot, if you’re kind. But you cannot be both. Do you understand, Lyra?”

“What’s a bee-got?”

“A bigot is someone who refuses to accept that there are other people who are different than them. They like to try to make other people be like themselves. Having principles is a must, Lyra, but one cannot be intolerant.”

Lyra soaked his words and nodded. “So, my parents were not bad people?”

“Bad and good are relative moral terms. Your parents will not be called ‘good’ by the likes of Mrs Fulsome, but they were honest, brave, passionate, and principled people. Has the Librarian taught you meta-ethics?”

Lyra shook her head.

“I will talk to him about adding it to your studies.” Asriel stood up, but Lyra suddenly clutched his coat.

“You’re going to the North, ‘ent you? Can I come?” she said

Asriel shook her off. “No. The North isn’t for five-year-olds.”

“But I’m turning six this year!”

“Still not old enough for the North. I will send you a postcard and a frozen amber, if you promise to do well in your studies.”

Lyra looked mutinous for a moment, but her expression changed into something a little bit sly. In that fleeting change of expression, she was the splitting image of Marisa.

“I think it’s a good thing that Mrs Fulsome wouldn’t like my parents,” said Lyra.

Asriel was taken aback by the obvious similarity between them that he didn’t really register her statement. “What?” he said

“All Mrs Fulsome does is work in the kitchen, goes home, and goes to church. I think it’s a good thing that Mrs Fulsome wouldn’t like my parents. It makes them seem much more exciting and grand.”

Asriel barked a laughter. “You are truly your parents’ child.”

—

THE TIMES

**Meteoric Sword from the King of Lapland Arrives in the Palace**

A 4-feet sword claimed to be crafted from meteoric ore from the King of Lapland was presented at the Royal Palace in a traditional Laplandic ceremony. The ceremony was chiefly presided by the Prince of Wales, who accepted the gift on behalf of the King. The sword was a symbol of the success of the diplomatic mission led by Lord Asriel to the King of Lapland last month […]

—

In a wooden cabin on the faraway North, Lord Asriel continues his secret quest to alter the face of heaven. On his work table, amidst telescopes and cartographs, there was a photo of a scowling child and a short letter with an Oxford postmark written in neat, learned hands:

_Asriel, here is your annual photogram of Lyra. The week before this photogram was taken, she had successfully led a group of servant children to steal a gyptian boat._

Sometimes, Lord Asriel would catch a glimpse of the letter and the photogram. He’d smile at the scowling child, and went on his work.

**Author's Note:**

> All the dialogue in the first section is taken directly from _La Belle Sauvage_. Credits to Philip Pullman.
> 
> The new His Dark Materials TV series reignited all of the Asriel/Lyra father-daughter feels, so I'm reviving an old work. The Asriel in this work is a mix between book!Asriel and show!Asriel.


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